Corporate fear that hobbles staff
Companies have more to gain than to lose from ‘intrapreneurship’
IRECENTLY sat on a panel of entrepreneurs as part of a training programme for high performers at one of the biggest corporations in South Africa.
This is not common in corporate training programmes, especially since big companies shy away from encouraging their teams to listen to entrepreneurs and gain ideas on how they can be more entrepreneurial in their roles or ventures.
Companies are typically scared of losing their best performers to entrepreneurship.
The reality is that, in a constantly changing world, companies have no choice but to develop some form of entrepreneurial culture to survive.
The buzz word normally used to refer to this is “intrapreneurship” — the concept that companies can become more profitable by incorporating elements of an entrepreneurial culture.
They do this by encouraging entrepreneurial behaviours such as innovation, risk-taking and ownership.
This is not easy to achieve, especially for big companies where long-standing routines, bureaucracy and hierarchies can stand in the way of innovators. When companies attempt to be intrapreneurial, they try to do this within the confines of the existing organisational structures and processes. This ends up crippling the employees who actually have a propensity for intrapreneurship.
An alternative way of dealing with this is to first accept that employees have different levels of entrepreneurial acumen.
There are those who perform best when allowed to be entrepreneurial within an organisation. There are those who prefer to keep a full-time job while gaining their energy from an entrepreneurial project outside of work. There are those who are best being full-time entrepreneurs.
When a company aspires to be more entrepreneurial, it needs to be prepared to support the different kinds of entrepreneurs that emerge from fostering an entrepreneurial culture.
This is even more critical among high performers, as you want them to be performing at their best, independent of the current organisational set-up. Instead of being afraid to lose the top performers who want to become entrepreneurs, companies should be helping them to find ways to develop their entrepreneurial ideas.
Imagine what could happen if a topperforming employee was given a chance to become the top-performing entrepreneur they were destined to become? They could run their pilots within the organisation and let the employer be the first client. The company already has an excellent track record on the employee’s abilities and acumen. The employee has the potential to grow into being among the best suppliers for the company.
Both the company and the individual stand to gain when the “employee-turned-entrepreneur” is best positioned to benefit themselves and the business.
This will change the current mentality of people hiding their afterwork entrepreneurial pursuits out of fear. Instead, they will bring these pursuits forward, in the hopes of creating a win-win solution for everyone.
What happened with Vodacom and the Please Call Me idea is an example of this. This was an innovative idea from an employee that was developed and helped the organisation to reap returns. The only mistake was not putting the employee in a position where he could also benefit.
The result was a win-lose situation — hence the lawsuit that followed.
Not everyone with entrepreneurial acumen hungers for the risk and rush that come from being a full-time business owner. Some people gain their energy from having entrepreneurial projects on the side, while maintaining a full-time job.
If the employee is more energetic and productive when balancing both work and entrepreneurial hobbies, there is no reason why this should be discouraged.
We need to move away from the attitude that side projects can make employees lose focus. Some are actually energised by it.
More and more big companies are developing incubation hubs to improve the low levels of entrepreneurship around the country. There is no reason why these hubs should not be made available for use by the company’s employees, too.
I was motivated to see that big corporate I mentioned above being open to allowing its high-performing staff to learn from a range of entrepreneurs. As a result, the employees become more open to discussing how they and the business could benefit from them developing their own entrepreneurial projects, full time or part time.
This company was not operating from a fear of losing top performers. It was encouraging everyone to become their best selves — independent of the organisation’s existing structures and routines.
If someone is an entrepreneur at heart, we should let them be that.
People perform at their best when they follow their calling. We should encourage everyone to find what that calling is.
For some, it is being on some form of an entrepreneurial path. It is about time companies started supporting this among their teams. Everyone involved stands to benefit.
This cripples employees who actually have a propensity for intrapreneurship
Sikhakhane is an international speaker, writer and business adviser with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University